News

We can. I can. That is the message that is spread during World Cancer Day, on 4 February. How can you – as a collective or as an individual – take action to reduce the global burden of cancer? The European Lead Factory currently has 34 programmes that focus on various targets related to cancer. In these programmes innovative approaches are used to find starting points for new drugs to fight this disease. 

With help of the European Lead Factory, the Phosphodiesterase Inhibitors for Neglected Parasitic Diseases (PDE4NPD) project takes the next step towards developing novel drugs against kinetoplastid parasites such as Trypanosoma brucei, the causative parasite of African sleeping sickness, and Trypanosoma cruzi, causing Chagas disease. Together, PDE4NPD and the EU Lead Factory will screen 450,000 compounds for their potential to inhibit one of the parasite PDEs the project has validated. 

The latest issue of BioCentury Innovations focuses on open innovation within early drug discovery and compound sharing, with the European Lead Factory as one of the best practices, with the largest compound library openly available. More and more pharmaceutical companies open their compound libraries in collaboration with the external community and/or other companies. 

Dr. Margit Mahlapuu, one of the academic researchers who has benefited from EU Lead Factory screening activities by identifying a drug candidate series for type 2 diabetes, went on to create a spin-out company based on these results.